Fix Iast And Use In India And Not English
September 12, 2019
What’s wrong with English?
English is a fine language, no complaints in it’s originality. But simply put, Indian words written in English sounds
terribly bad in the Indian prounciation. Take the word India for example. It should be pronounced with thi as in
this. Rather it has become a norm to pronounce it as di as in did. It just takes us a moment to realize how bad
the Indian words have lost their original sounds. Even Wikipedia page on India
doesn’t write the word India in IAST. I’m tired of pronuncing Thamizh as Tamil. These days Indians pronunce some
Indian words not based on their original sounds/Indian scripts, but based on the English scripts. This is a terrible
situation for the Indian languages which have their root in their phonetic system. Indians have forgotten the languages
to the extent that the native sounds are now being forgotten. If this trend continues the native languages will die a
slow death and that is what is happening already.
Look at the below words, read them first in English followed by the native language of your choice and the IAST script.
| English | IAST | Devanagari | Tamil/Brahmi |
|---|---|---|---|
| India | Inḍia | इंडिया | இந்தியா |
| Modi | Moḍi | मोदि | மோதி |
| Tamil | Moḍi | मोदि | மோதி |
International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration
Indian languages are phonetic based. Thinking logically, sounds are the souls of the languages and the scripts come later when these sounds need to be transmitted across space and time boundaries.
Indian languages has (and had) various scripts to inscribe the phones/sounds, the most prominent being the Brahmic scripts and the most modern/majority being devanagari.
So the next question comes up on how to internationalize the Indian langagues in Roman characters.
- Why should we internationalize Indian languages? For foreigners to read and comprehend the Indian texts.
- Why in Roman characters? Because the Europeans have written the new world order (post colonialism) and English is the most commonly used language in the world. In modern times India needs a common langauge and we have rejected Sanskrit/Hindi, so the default choice is English and that’s written in Roman script.
International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) was formalized in 1894 for this purpose. IAST is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanization of Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that emerged during the nineteenth century from suggestions by Charles Trevelyan, William Jones, Monier Monier-Williams and other scholars, and formalised by the Transliteration Committee of the Geneva Oriental Congress. IAST makes it possible for the reader to read the Indic text unambiguously, exactly as if it were in the original Indic script. It is this faithfulness to the original scripts that accounts for its continuing popularity amongst scholars.
What’s wrong with IAST?
IAST is a superset of the English scripts and it does a much better job than English in representing the Indian language sounds. However it is not even close to Indian scripts like Brahmi or Devanagari.
Take the sound த in Tamil. It is written as T in IAST. A common man (including our educated Tamil people) reads
Tamil as டாமில்.
Take the sound दी. The word मोदी is written as Modi in IAST and English. A common man in foreign or in even
Tamilnadu that’s not introduced to Hindi pronounces it as मोडी. For all Thala Dhoni fans, do you remember Tamil media
wrote his name as டோணி before 2015? Everyone in TN would’ve read this. This was not a typo error from the media. This
was a lack of understanding of scripts and sounds.
What to fix in IAST?
There are many fixes to be done. But at the minimum:
- Swap the usage of T and Ṭ. T should mean ट and Ṭ should mean त.
- Swap the usage of D and Ḍ. D should mean ड and Ḍ should mean द.
What about public usage in Indian?
I would go to the extent and say abandon English/IAST and use a common script like Brahmi or Devanagiri across India. Malayalam script is inclusive of all the sounds in the Indian languages and I would recommend to use it. But since it is not practically possible because of the fear of Hindi imposition in TN and various other reasons on the same note that I do not want to cover in this topic, the best possible solution is to use the bug fixed version of IAST.
It is not difficult to update the Indian curriculum/syllabus to use this instead of English, except for the political implications. The transition will be seamless for the kids as well and they will understand why they are learning it. We should do this for the sake of preserving the native languages of India.
If you think this poses a risk that Indians could lose their native scripts if IAST becomes widely adopted, the situation of English adoption is already more alarming, so there’s nothing new to be alarmed about. Tamilnadu people will never allow to have Sanskrit to be a language of communication for their notorious fake rationalist agendas and nonsensical dravidian movements that has stiffled all the progress in the state. So the only best option that the Indians together are left with is IAST. The sooner we adopt it, the better it is for hundreds of Indian languages that are disappearing slowly due to the wide spread nature of English.
For Tamil people reading this, realize that the pronunciation of தமிழ் as Tamil is just aweful, given how sweet the
original word sounds like. We all can work towards this, probably form a body that can recommend this case to the
central and state governments and make IAST the wide adoption.
If IAST is also not good, then some other plan must be deviced to correct the situation.